The Complete Poetry of John Milton (45 page)

ARGUMENT

Nymphs of Himera
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—for you remember Daphnis and Hylas / and the long-lamented fate of Bion— / proclaim your Sicilian song through the towns of the Thames: / what cries the mournful Thyrsis poured forth, what murmurings, / and with what incessant complaints he vexed the caves [5] / and rivers, the wandering streams and recesses of the woods, / when to himself he lamented Damon, prematurely borne away, nor did he / banish the deep night with his griefs, wandering through lonely places. / And now twice
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was the stalk with its green ear rising, / and twice were the yellow harvests being counted in the barns, [10] / since the last day had swept Damon beneath the shadows, / and still Thyrsis was not present; namely, love of the sweet Muse / was keeping that shepherd in the Tuscan city. / But when his mind was full and the care of the flock / left behind
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called him home, and as soon as he sat under the accustomed elm, [15] / then truly, then at last, he felt the loss of his friend, / and began to disburden his great sorrow thus: /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Ah me! what on earth, what divinities in heaven shall I affirm, / since they have torn you away to inexorable death, Damon? [20] / Thus do you forsake us, thus shall your virtue go below without a name, / and be joined to the troop of unknown shades? / But he
⁶
who divides the souls with his golden wand / would not wish this, and he would lead you into a multitude worthy of you, / and would keep at a distance the entire slothful, silent herd. [25] /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Whatever will be, assuredly, unless a wolf
sees
me first,
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/ you shall not crumble to dust in an unwept sepulchre; / your repute will endure and flourish long / among the shepherds. To you they shall be glad to pay their vows [30] / second after Daphnis, after Daphnis to sing praises, / while Pales, while Faunus loves the fields:
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/ if there is any worth in having cultivated the ancient faith and piety / and the arts of Pallas, and in having possessed a comrade of songs. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. [35] / These certainly await you, for you these rewards will exist, Damon. / But what at length will become of me now? what faithful companion / will cling to my side, as you often were wont / in the hard winters and through the regions full of snows, / or under the fierce sun, with herbs dying from thirst, [40] / whether the task was to advance on great lions from a distance / or to frighten hungry wolves away from the high sheepfolds. / Who will be wont to lull my time with speaking and singing? /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / To whom shall I confide my heart? Who will teach me to assuage [45] / my mordant cares, who to deceive the long night / with pleasant conversations, while the delicate pear hisses / before the grateful fire, and the hearth crackles with nuts, as the evil / southwind rattles all the doors, and whistles in the elm above. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. [50] / Or in summer, when the day is turned to noon, / when Pan enjoys sleep, hidden in the shade of an oak, / and the nymphs return to their well-known haunts beneath the waters, / and the shepherds lie concealed, the farmer snores under a hedge, / who will bring back to me your flatteries, who then [55] / your laughter and Attic salt,
⁹
your cultured graces? /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / But now alone
in
the fields, now alone in the pastures I roam / wherever the branching shadows are made dense by the valleys, / there I await the evening; overhead the rain and the southeast wind
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[60] / sorrowfully resound, and in the restless twilight of the buffeted wood. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Alas, how entangled with insolent weeds are my once cultivated / fields, and the tall grain itself is drooping with neglect, / the unmarried grape withers on its slighted vine, [65] / nor do myrtle groves delight; my sheep also offend, but they / mourn and turn their faces to their master. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Tityrus calls to the hazels, Alphesiboeus to the mountain ashes, / Aegon to the willows, handsome Amyntas to the rivers:
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[70] / Here are the icy springs, here the pastures spread with moss, / here the zephyrs, here the arbutus sounds amidst the quiet waters. / They sing to deaf ears; having stumbled on them, I vanished into the shrubs. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Mopsus
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came after them, for he had marked me by chance returning, [75] / and truly Mopsus did understand the songs of birds and the stars: / Thyrsis, what now? he said, what excessive bile torments you? / Either love is destroying you or a star is wickedly bewitching you. / Saturn’s star
¹³
has often been painful to shepherds, / and it pierces the inmost heart with its slanting leaden bullet. [80] /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / The nymphs are amazed, and they speak, What is to become of you, Thyrsis? / What do you wish for yourself? that brow of youth is not wont to be / melancholy, nor its eyes grim, nor its countenance severe; / these things justly desire dances and nimble sports [85] / and always love; twice miserable he who loved late. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Hyas came, and Dryope, and Aegle, the daughter of Baucis, / well-versed in melodies and skilled with the harp, but ruined by pride; / Chloris, a neighbor of the Idumanian river, came.
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[90] / Neither flatteries nor consoling words, / nothing moves me, if anything appears, nor any hope of the future. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Ah me, alas! how similarly the young bullocks play through the meadows, / all comrades together under a law harmonious to themselves, [95] / and none parts a friend from one more than from another / of the herd; thus the wolves come to their food in packs, / and the shaggy asses are joined with their mates in turn; / the law of the sea is the same, on the deserted shore Proteus
¹⁵
/ counts his hosts of seals, and least valuable of birds, [100] / the sparrow always has someone with whom he may be, and to all the grains / flies about free, returning late to his own nest; / if chance has delivered him to death, or a kite has brought him misfortune / with its hooked beak, or a peasant has brought him down with an arrow, / forthwith that bird seeks another for companion flight. [105] / We men are an insensible race, and driven on by detestable fate, / a nation hostile in our minds and discordant in our heart, / scarcely does anybody find one equal to himself in a thousand, / or if a destiny not unkind were granted at last to our prayers, / an unexpected hour, as far as you will have trusted time, [110] / steals that one, leaving behind an eternal loss to future ages. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Alas! what wandering fancy carried me into unknown climes / to pass through airy rocks and the snow-capped Alps? / Was it of such worth to have seen buried Rome? [115] / although it were such as he viewed it when long ago / Tityrus
¹⁶
himself left his sheep and fields, / that I could have been absent from you, from so dear a companion, / that I could set between you so many deep seas, so many mountains, / so many forests, so many rocky lands and roaring rivers? [120] / Ah, surely I would have been permitted to touch his right hand at the last / and his calmed eyes dying very peacefully, / and to have said, Farewell! you will go to the stars remembering me. /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / And even though I never shall repent to remember you, [125] / Tuscan shepherds, youths devoted to the Muses, / here was grace and charm; and you also Damon were a Tuscan, / from whom you claim your descent from the ancient city of Lucca. / O how great I was when stretched beside / the murmurings of the cool Arno and the poplar-grove, where was the softer grass, [130] / I could pluck now violets, now the tallest myrtles, / and hear Menalcas contending with Lycidas! / And even I myself dared to compete,
¹⁷
nor do I suppose that I much / displeased, for your gifts
¹⁸
are still with me, / the baskets of twigs, those of wicker, and the shepherd pipes with waxen bonds. [135] / Indeed Dati and Francini taught their beech trees my name / and both were noted for their songs / and learning, both of Lydian blood.
¹⁹
/

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / These things the dewy moon spoke to me, then full of joy, [140] / when alone I shut the tender kids in their wattled folds. / Ah, how often did I say, when dark ashes possessed you, / Now Damon is singing or now he is stretching out his nets for a hare, / now he is weaving osiers for himself although it be for various uses. / And then what future I was hoping for with my affable mind [145] / I snatched from my trivial desire and supposed my present circumstances. / Hark, good friend! are you doing anything? unless anything detain you by accident, / let us go and lie for a while in the clear shade, / either beside the waters of the Colne
²⁰
or where lie the lands of Cassivelaunas. / You shall run through your medicinal potions for me, your herbs, [150] / and your hellebore, humble crocuses, and leaf of hyacinth, / and what plants that marsh holds, and the arts of the physicians. / Ah! let the plants perish, let the arts of the physicians perish, / and the herbs, since they themselves have accomplished nothing for their master. / Even I—for I do not know what my pipe was pouring forth [155] / loudly—now daylight is present after the eleventh night—
²¹
/ perhaps I was then directing my lips to my new pipes, / yet they have burst asunder with their binding broken, and no further / have they been able to carry the grave notes; I question also that I may not be / vain, and yet that I may recite; depart, you woods. [160] /

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / I myself shall celebrate
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the Dardanian ships through the Rutupian sea, / and the ancient kingdom of Inogene, daughter of Pandrasus, / the chieftains Brennus and Arviragus, and old Belinus, / and the Armorican colonists at last under the law of the Britons; [165] / then Igraine pregnant with Arthur by fatal deception, / Gorlois’ counterfeit features and assumed arms, / the guile of Merlin. O then if life remain to me, / you, my pipe, will hang far off on an aged pine tree / quite forgotten by me, or changed, you shall shrill a tale of Britain [170] / to your native Muses! What then? one can not do everything, / one can not hope to do everything. For me it is sufficiently ample / reward, and to me great glory—even if I be unknown forever / and utterly inglorious to the outside world— / if blonde Ouse read me under her locks and the drinker of the Alne [175] / and the Humber well-filled with whirlpools, and every wood along the Trent, / and before all my Thames, and the Tamar blackened by mines, / and if the Orkneys in their distant seas become acquainted with me.
²³
/

Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / These things I was keeping for you in the tough bark of the laurel, [180] / these and more besides; moreover the two cups
²⁴
which Manso / gave me, Manso, not the least glory of the Chalcidian shore,
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/ these a marvellous work of art, and he himself singular, / and he had engraved them around with a twofold theme. / In the middle are the waves of the Red Sea, and odor-bearing spring, [185] / the far-reaching shores of Arabia, and the woods exuding balsam gums; / among those woods the Phoenix, divine bird, unique on earth, / gleaming cerulean with diversely colored wings, / watches Aurora rising over the glassy waters. / In another part are the wide-extending sky and mighty Olympus. [190] / Who would imagine? here also Love,
²⁶
his quiver painted against a cloud, / his gleaming arms, his torches and darts stained with gold-bronze; / from this place he does not smite trifling spirits or the ignoble heart / of the rabble, but, whirling around with flaming eyes, / he endlessly scatters his darts aloft through the spheres, [195] / unwearied, and never aims toward downward shots. / Hence holy minds and the images of the gods have taken fire. /

You also are among these—for no uncertain hope deceives me, Damon— / you also are among these certainly; for where else might your sweet / and holy simplicity have gone, for where else your radiant virtue? [200] / It would not be proper to have sought you in Lethean Orcus,
²⁷
/ neither do tears for you befit, nor shall I shed them more. / Away, my tears; Damon lives in the pure air, / the air he so pure possesses: he rejected the rainbow with his foot. / Among the souls of heroes and immortal gods, [205] / he consumes the heavenly draughts and drinks their joys / with his sacred mouth. But you, since having received the privilege of heaven, / are on the right hand; and peaceful, favor me, however you may be called, / whether you will be our Damon, or hearken more favorably to / Diodati, by which divine name
²⁸
the whole [210] / of heaven will know you, and you will be called Damon in the woods. / Because blushing modesty and youth without blemish / were dear to you, because the delight of marriage was tasted not at all, / lo! likewise the rewards of virginity are reserved for you.
²⁹
/ You, encircled around your glorious head with a shining crown [215] / and riding in happy bowers entwined with palm leaves, / shall pursue eternally the immortal marriage / where song and mingled lyre rage with blessed dances, / and festal orgies revel under the thyrsus of Sion.
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